Each day I wake anew, and head furiously to the kitchen to make my coffee in anticipation of another day brimming with oppressive futility. My source of excitement lately has been a due diligence towards an alacritous autodidacticism. I drink some coffee, watch some Amy Goodman and then brace myself for some hardcore reading. I can’t find words to express how psychologically alive I’ve felt as of late, so much so that I’ve even stopped trying when others ask what I’ve “been up to”. There is, however, another more perilous reason for this inability to articulate my intellectual passion, and that is the very simple fact that so few people want to partake in it.
After reading Susan Jacboy’s The Age of American Unreason about a month ago, I was left sufficiently disturbed, enough to make several lifestyle changes, notably some serious distraction-mitigation from what she would call ‘video culture’. Her concept is not one easily summarized in brief because it refers both to technology (i.e. television, movies, computers, all screen interfaces) and behavior (i.e. constructs of importance surrounding said television shows, movies, games, etc). What was already very clear to me is that such media is now so ubiquitous, so thoroughly woven into our every day life, that to escape the oppressive forces of video culture distraction is a one-way ticket to loneliness of mind. Without respite, I can hear from the next room one of my roommates watching 6 hours of The O.C. one day, followed by 5 or 6 hours of Six Feet Under the next, followed by- you get the picture. Suspending my disbelief for a moment, let us presume we are talking about artful content (or more broadly speaking, something of craft and substance) in television media. Would it then by excusable to carry on one’s day in such a fashion? I don’t need the Jacoby to aid me in recognizing the psychological turpitude of being passively ‘engaged’ (if in fact it can be likened to engagement at all) for lengthy periods of time.
Is such a scenario a fair representation of the majority of society? The answer is yes. Absolutely without doubt. Our capitalistically predacious society makes sure that unless we are one of the sick sons-a-bitches who is able to rise to the top of the corporate oligarchy, we’re simply not going to have all that much free time on your hands. We will be working, hard, and when we are not working, we will be so physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted, we will want to forget the humiliation and dehumanization of the free market’s invisible hand wrapped tightly around our throats. And what better way to forget than to watch the screen(s) designed precisely for that purpose, so that when we do have extended free time, we not only want to “do nothing,” we have no idea how to do anything else. The down comforter of video culture is gloriously inviting, but it will smother and suck all that remains of our intellectual livelihood from our être (painfully performed by Alan Greenspan’s proboscis), and we will remain ignorant of it all.
Having long ago recognized the validity of Chomsky’s media theories (Manufacturing Consent et al.), I think a new component needs to be incorporated. It is clear we have demonstrable evidence that corporate media distorts, frames, omits, and occasionally fabricates information, but what is not clear is why there continues this stunning apathy when information about, say, the Honduras coup or the Saro Wiwa suit against Royal Dutch Shell is leaked through the protective corporate filter. It would be foolish not to acknowledge that a myriad of factors are at play in such a situation, but I would say that the insidious metastasis of video culture in our day to day life has a christ-load to do with it- why else would seemingly nobody want to talk to me about Zinn, Dennett, deLanda, E.O. Wilson, etc?